Steam for the holidays

Then, on Wednesday evening, Valve announced in a Steam community post that the Linux Steam beta was open to the public as "an early holiday gift."

Valve also announced that bugs should now be submitted via the Steam for Linux GitHub repository, which went live on Wednesday evening.

As of Thursday, there are 39 games available through Steam for Linux, including Team Fortress 2, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, Serious Sam 3: BFE, and more.

It's not much, but it's certainly a start.

Users react

Forum users and commenters expressed near equal amounts of joy and disparagement about Steam for Linux on Wednesday and Thursday.

"Reducing dependency on Windows and encouraging platform agnostic code is a good thing for PC gaming going forward," wrote NeoGAF user Interfectum.

On the other hand, "Steam for Linux is a nice extra for Linux users as they gain some native games," wrote Engadget commenter boe2BE, adding, "For most gamers, the migration to linux is still a bad idea however, since the vast majority of games are not supported and never will be."

That remains to be seen, but it's certainly true that Valve has a long way to go if it wants to make Linux gaming an actual, viable alternative.

In addition, Valve's "Steam Box" living room PC hardware, thought to be launching next year, may or may not have something to do with Steam for Linux - there's no way to know until Valve decides to tell us.

Either way, it's clear that the market for Linux Steam games exists, however small, and that tux gamers are just as eager to play Half-Life 3 as anyone.